Windows Movie Maker is most popular video editing package says techradar Pro survey

sincity · October 28, 2015

Video editing is one of the few tasks that have truly benefitted from the rise in computational power, the ever decreasing price of resources (memory and storage) and the rise of multiple form factors. Who would have thought a few years ago that you'd be able to grab 4K footage on a £200 smartphone?

A survey carried out by techradar Pro revealed some surprising trends amongst our readers who edit videos including some trends that might indicate where the market is heading in a near future.

More than 1000 respondents indicated that they edit videos with the overwhelming majority considering themselves either as total novice or amateurs.

While the desktop remains the platform of choice for video editing purposes for nearly half of respondents, laptops have caught up rapidly with more than 38% of our video editors claiming to use them.

Desktop PC remains the best platform for those looking for sheer value for money. However, laptops offer more flexibility especially if you want to work from different locations. As expected smartphones and tablets gathered single digits as did the OSes they run on (Android and iOS).

Truly mobile video editing still lagging

In other words, Windows and OS X still remain the preferred operating systems for video editing tasks with others offering little competition for now.

As for video editing tools, not surprisingly most users opted for free video editing software with Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker capturing the top spot with more shares than the rest of the competition put together. VirtualDub and Lightworks are a distant second and third respectively.

Amongst paid for video editing software, Adobe Premiere Elements remains the undisputed leader ahead of Cyberlink Power Director and Sony Movie Studio.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the survey was what was done to the final videos once edited. As expected, most of you (about half of those who filled the survey) store it on an external hard drive and about 15% store it on Youtube with 8% trusting the cloud to take care of their beloved moving pictures.

Online retailer Ebuyer provided with the giveaway prize, a DIY video editing rig worth more than £500.